


i'll make a man out of you

by sevensevan



Series: pride month 2018 [16]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Pre-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Trans Character, Trans Peter Parker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 10:35:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14953038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevensevan/pseuds/sevensevan
Summary: He's thirteen years old when he tells Aunt May to call him Peter.





	i'll make a man out of you

**Author's Note:**

> just a lil trans peter oneshot because i have an absolute mountain of Feelings about peter parker and finding out about the trans peter headcanon was the best moment of my life. pre civil war; doesn’t deal with any of the events of mcu canon. enjoy. title from mulan because honestly what did you expect from me

You first figure it out when you’re nine years old, and your teacher asks the class what you want to be when you grow up. Your hand shoots up, and you proudly announce that you want to be a fireman. The teacher smiles sort of weirdly at you, and asks you if you mean firewoman.

That confuses you, and the class moves on, but you decide that no, you didn’t mean fire _woman_.

Of course, being the very responsible child that you are, in possession of exceptional time management skills, it takes you four more years to actually _say_ anything about it.

You tell Aunt May, first. You’ve read all sorts of scary things online; kids being abused, thrown out, killed for being trans. But this is Aunt May, and she just hugs you tightly and asks if you want her to call you a different name.

You say Peter, because it sounds cool with your last name, and you think it suits you. It feels right when you say it in your head. _Peter Parker_. It’s a good name, you think. May tells Uncle Ben for you, and he’s a little slower with calling you _he_ , calling you Peter, but he does his best and calls you son sometimes, and that’s more than you ever could’ve hoped for. And he gets this _look_ on his face when you tell him you want your middle name to be Benjamin, all misty-eyed behind his classes, proud and happy and loving.

And so Peter you are, at least at home. And then at school, when you start high school, which is terrifying, but also sort of exhilarating. You meet with your teachers before the first day of classes, and Aunt May does all the talking. It hasn’t been perfect; she didn’t want you to bind, the hormones you’re starting next month terrify her, surgery makes her nervous; but you sit next to her as she tells each and every one of your teachers in her _you-will-listen-to-me-young-man_ voice (and even though it’s only when you’re in trouble, you still get a little shock of happiness when she calls you _young man_ ) that they will call you Peter, they will call you _he_ , and she will make them regret being born if they don’t, and God, you’re really, really lucky, aren’t you?

You start high school with your name change almost finished and hormones a month away, and as soon as you meet Ned Leeds in freshman biology you’re pretty sure you’ve met your long-lost twin brother.

Well. Maybe not. He’s Filipino, and was born in Hawaii, and you are definitely neither of those things. But still. He’s, like, really awesome.

“I’m transgender,” you tell Ned one day, when you’re building a Lego Millennium Falcon in his living room. He blinks at you.

“Huh?” He doesn’t seem upset, just genuinely confused. You flush with embarrassment and shame and—it’s _stupid_ , because you’re not _ashamed_ of being trans. You’re _not_. You don’t care what people think of you.

Except you totally, absolutely _do_ care what _Ned_ thinks of you, because he’s sort of your best friend now.

“I’m trans,” you repeat, staring at the Lego Han Solo in your hands. Your voice cracks a bit, which is usually exciting because you’ve been on testosterone for two months and things can’t change fast enough, but right now it just makes you wince. “Like, you know. I was born a girl.” Your voice trails off a bit. You won’t look up at Ned, _can’t_ look up at Ned. What if he’s angry? What if he acts cool with it but it gets all weird? _What if he tells you to leave_?

“Oh,” Ned says. “Okay.” You see him shrug out of the corner of your eye. “That’s cool.” He doesn’t seem to have anything else to say.

“You’re not mad?” you ask.

“Dude, no way,” he says. “We got invaded by _aliens_ , man. There’s superheroes living in our city. We’ve got bigger problems than you being yourself.” That’s…actually kind of funny. You half-laugh, finally lifting your eyes from the pile of Legos in front of you and looking at Ned. “You wanna get my mom to buy us pizza?” he asks you, and that’s the end of that.

Well. Not the _end_ , really. He asks a few weeks later how you get your voice deep, and you explain testosterone. He tells you it’s kind of badass that you stab yourself with needles every week. You’re not…entirely sure how to react to that, but you’re pretty sure it’s a compliment.

The first time you don’t bind around Ned is the summer after your freshman year. It’s just too hot, and you can’t deal with it today. There’s acne all over your chest and back, and your binder is falling apart, and you spend ten minutes staring at it before you put on a short sleeve button-up over your t-shirt and leave to get on the subway.

Ned doesn’t notice, or if he does, he doesn’t care.

Then Uncle Ben dies, and suddenly you can climb walls and jump into the sky, and your body is sort of amazing now, even if you still want to climb out of your own skin sometimes. Most of the time. You’re not really sure anymore. You have a six-pack now, and no matter how much you eat you can’t seem to gain anything but muscle, and it seems like you shouldn’t be so uncomfortable, not when you were _given_ a body that people spend years training for. But you can’t make it go away, can’t stop compulsively looking at yourself sideways in every mirror and window you walk past to make sure your chest looks flat, can’t use public bathrooms without a spike of anxiety in your throat even though you haven’t been misgendered in months, can’t even _imagine_ going to school without a binder and a button-up and even a sweater over the top, on the particularly bad days.

You wear a baggie hoodie whenever you’re being Spider-man. No matter how hot it is, no matter how much you sweat and burn and kind of want to puke. You can’t bind while you’re swinging around the city, and you are _absolutely not_ going to be known as Spider- _woman_. So you suffer through it, and you wash your costume at the laundromat down the street whenever it gets too disgusting.

It’s kind of amazing, the whole world knowing you as male. Most people already do; you’re not sure how many of your classmates actually know about you being trans. It’s not a _secret_ , but you’re not really friends with anyone besides Ned, and you know you pass pretty well. Still, seeing yourself in headlines as Spider- _man_ is a certain kind of exhilarating, even if no one knows it’s you.

You don’t know if Flash knows about you. You’re not sure if _Penis Parker_ is a stupid nickname or a malicious taunt. Either way, you’re sick and fucking tired of hearing it.

So yeah. Things are pretty good. They’re not perfect; school is weird and sexuality is confusing and Flash is a dick and your insurance won’t pay for top surgery and you have to learn to shave your bad teenage mustache from a YouTube video instead of from Uncle Ben, but they’re pretty damn _good_ , all things considered. You have May, who hasn’t called you _she_ since you came out. You have Ned, who apparently did a ton of Internet research and now asks people for their pronouns when he meets them, and bought you a new binder for your birthday and got the brand and the size right and everything. You have good grades and testosterone and a really terrible crush on Liz Allan and you get to be a superhero.

Most of all, you get to be a man. And that’s sort of amazing all by itself.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you liked it!! this fic and this headcanon in general mean a lot to me so any feedback is very much appreciated!! i'm writing a fic a day for pride month, and i'm taking any and all lgbtq prompts through the end of june. leave a comment or send me an ask on tumblr @daisys-quake. leave a comment and kudos if you enjoyed.


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